iStockphoto / AdrianHancu
The latest edition of the Fortune 500 was released yesterday (May 21st) and multiple historical milestones were hit. Walmart became the first company to do $500 BILLION in annual sales which is absolutely insane, and Amazon cracked the Fortune 500 top 10 for the first time.
Amazon came in at #8 on the Fortune 500 list, up four spots from #12 in 2017. Quartz notes that this is due to Amazon boosting revenue by $70 billion in just two years. They’ve also got this handy chart which shows just how hard Jeff Bezos’ Amazon has been coming for Walmart over the past 16 years:
https://twitter.com/kirabind/status/998645632188452866?s=21
Amazon’s $178 billion in revenue pales in comparison to Walmart’s $500 billion by that chart must be unsettling if you’re sitting on the Walmart Board of Directors. It’s pretty obvious that the explosive growth of Amazon is not slowing down.
Another interesting look at these numbers can be found on Quartz where they have diagrams of profit and market cap. When you sort by profit, Walmart is the clear #1 but the margins between companies are much slimmer. Then, when you sort by Market Capitalization it starts to write an intriguing narrative where Apple and Amazon have Market Caps that are A LOT higher than Walmart.
If you had to bet on who will be higher on the Fortune 500 list 5 (or 10) years from now, Amazon or Walmart, who do you pick? You can drop your answers down below in the comments or hit me up on Twitter at @casspa.